Makes the very best of a small budget.

Rating: 7/10 (6 October 2004)

*review contains spoilers*
Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later it without a doubt the best British horror film of recent times. It has some genuinely chilling moments, some great subtle humour, and best (and most importantly) of all, its a pretty original piece of work.
'Jim', played by up and coming Irish actor Cillian Murphy emerges from a coma in a London hospital. he is alone. He goes out into the corridor - he is still alone, and the place is trashed. He goes out into the street, and by jove, the whole of London is completely deserted... And its great! Immediately the audience is asking "what the hell is going on here?" Its something we're just not used to - never before have we been struck with such scenes in a British setting, and it is truly startling.
Unfortunately for Jim, the answer to the current state of his country, is that it has been obliterated by a virus that infects and overcomes its victims in seconds with 'rage', turning them into almost unstoppable violent monsters...
The first hour of the film is great, and Boyle uses every second of his deserted London footage perfectly, building an incredibly creepy atmosphere, but its even in these early scenes that we see that the lack of budget is apparent - there are no bodies in the streets, it all seems just a little too TOO empty. However, this does add to the isolated theme even more.
The film slows a little as it makes its way through the second act. The whole movie was shot on digital film, which has been tweaked to give the film a grainy, moody look, and as much as this works, it does not disguise the fact that the film begins to lose its way a bit. As the characters trudge on in search of hope, the continued isolation of the two main characters becomes steadily more uneventful, rather than unnervingly lonesome. Although thats not to say it doesn't have its moments - Boyle gives us a few little set pieces in the moments to follow, but they just don't seem to do the premise justice - if all of Great Britain has been decimated by this virus, there should be rampaging hoards of infected crashing at them at every turn - but no-one, NO-ONE is around!
Its a shame though, because everything that could have made the last half of this film great, would cost lots of money. If you don't have it, you cant make it. Due to this, and a bad turn in story, the last third of the film descends into the unwanted, the unbelievable, and it just seems like such a waste.
Let me explain:
The infected humans in this film are just that - people who are overcome with a virus. They are not undead, thay are not zombies, as the director has stressed on many occasions. This means they sprint after you, not hobble like a pensioner with typhoid. One adversary is as dangerous as many. Most of the chills come from this fact, because as isolated as the survivors seem, what may be around the next corner could devastate everything. Whenever a few of the infected are on the screen, the tension is cranked up to breaking point - its edge of the seat stuff.
So why, why, WHY in the last third of the film are these brutal, scary enemies replaced by a much more idle threat? A few cockney soldiers! NOOOO! We almost completely forget about the infected masses, and are tossed into a completely new world where the bad guys are soldiers who all seem to have lost their minds, and have decided the only useful thing left to do is to rape a woman and a 13 year old girl. Useless. But wait, this shows us people we don't like! Baddies! I wonder what will happen to those guys...
Thankfully however, the final segment of the film makes up for it, all hell breaks loose before your eyes, people get mauled, blood is spilled, and it seems like a fitting payoff that leaves you satisfied with what has gone before.
One more gripe however. The acting throughout is very solid. From everyone. Except Megan Burns, who plays Hannah. She is young, fair enough, but her performance is so incredibly bad, she almost wrecks every single scene she is in, its ridiculous. There is no way Danny Boyle could have been satisfied with her acting, and there simply MUST have been something preventing him from replacing her.
Still though, all in all, the film works. Its unique, its scary, and it raises the bar significantly for bigger budget British films. Lets hope we get more of the same in the future, only without Megan Burns.
7/10. SP